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understand.'
    'True,' I said.
    'Excuse, excuse,' he said,  with that dry laugh  again.  'I hear this man speaking Icelandic so I ask him if he also speaks Esperanto. And, another miracle, he does. A little, most certainly. Here.'
    He  gave  me  his  card   which  made  him  a  German  called Bottger  who was something big in Esperanto. By this time the brennivin  had  arrived   and  Christopher had  got  a  third  for
    Bottger.
    'Do you know,' Christopher said, rotating between the two of us, 'that the recipe for this stuff is still kept secret?'
    'Thank God,' I said,  as the first sip  turned   my face into  a prune.  'Don't let it out, that's all.'
    'I say, don't you like it?' he asked, sounding very concerned.
    'Well, if you were an alcoholic it wouldn't stop you drinking, but it would certainly take the pleasure out of it.'
    That   brought  us  nicely  up  to  that   what-brings-you-here stuff. I told Christopher about my new employer (Grimm, not Batty,  of course)  and  the Sexy Eskies, and  he put  his hand  on my arm and said: 'Look at it this way- someone's got to do it.'
      That made   me feel like  a  hangman. Or an undertaker perhaps. Either way, it wasn't good..
    Bottger,  a  solo  twin,  was  planning on  striding about  the scenery  in large  boots,  visiting  old  Esperanto friends,  so they could talk about  the rest of us behind  our  backs. That brought up another volley of the stuff, which Christopher translated.
    'He  says that  if only  people would  take  the trouble to learn Esperanto, we could all speak what is in our  hearts.'
    'That would mean war.'
    'No,  no,'  Bottger  chipped in, in impatient English.  'That is the point.  No more wars, no misunderstandings, no troubles. We see into each other's minds.'
    . 'If that stewardess gets to see into my mind,' I said,  'there'll be plenty of troubles, I can  tell you.  And how about you?'  I asked Christopher. 'You're an international lavatory-paper smuggler, I take it?'
    He wasn't. But only just.  He'd tried a few things.  Farming,  publishing,  salesman. He hadn't hit quite the right thing so far.  He'd heard a tourist boom  was coming  in  Iceland and  he'd  come north,  fallen in love with the country and learned  the language. So  he  was  setting  up  an  import-export  business, with   the musical  paper-holder as his first move.
    'People absolutely love them. They go like hot cakes at all the seaside  places,  I'm  told.'
    'And  what are you sending back the other way?' Whatever it was, I thought it had to be better than those. Not necessarily, as it turned  out. He planned  to ship back shoals of stuffed puffins to an  unsuspecting Britain.
    I'd    seen   them   in   the   shops   there.   Depressed-looking creatures,  poised awkwardly on a chunk of lava. I didn't say so, but frankly I wouldn't have wanted  to put all my money into stuffed  puffins.
    'But this,'  he said,  tapping the  plastic  bag, 'is  my second million. Any chance of a free plug in that paper of yours?'
    'Not unless you can  persuade  a female puffin to take all her feathers off.'
     
     

6
     
     
    That's the time to arrive  in Iceland  - bang in the middle of a summer night.
    Then the sun doesn't sett. It just slips off-stage for an hour or two. I gave the other two a lift into town in a Daihatsu jeep I'd hired,  and  we sat in silence as the narrow  strip  of tarmac  led over  the  cold  grey  lava  fields, set  like forgotten  porridge  or boiled-over  toffee.  The first  American   astronauts  practised there:  they say they found  the moon quite  homely after that.
    Soon  we saw  the  red  and  green  roofs of Reykjavik  and  I dropped them  in the  town and  set off for Thingvellir. If she wanted  to see me, that's where she'd  be.
    Out  over the lava field I went. A cold blade of a wind fleeced a